Professor H's Wayback Machine

Saturday, March 17, 2018

CHAMBER OF DARKNESS 2"THE DAY OF THE RED DEATH"Marvel Comics (at times in its early history sometimes referred to as Timely or Atlas)
was always a 2nd-level publisher-- somewhere in the middle as far as
quality was concerned-- whose specialty was flooding the market with
imitations of whatever was then currently popular.

For about a decade their massive output was stifled after their publisher Martin Goodman
had foolishly allowed his accountant to con him into shutting down his
own distribution company to sign with someone else, who his accountant
was probably getting kickbacks from. Too bad he didn't realize his new
distributor was under investigation by the Feds for racketeering
charges, and within months was shut down, taking Goodman's comics with them! He was only able to keep going by signing with yet another outfit-- who was owned by National (later DC), who limited his monthly output. This went on until he SOLD his company to Perfect Film, who quickly moved his operation to another distributor. Before long, Marvel's
output increased dramatically. Sales were going down across the board,
but by putting out MORE and MORE product, he was apparently able to
make up the losses.

One of the genres Marvel had long specialized in was horror. This had been mostly eliminated in the 60s in favor of superheroes, but when they started losing sales, other genres were looked into again. In late 1969, 2 new anthologies debuted-- TOWER OF SHADOWS and CHAMBER OF DARKNESS. It became obvious to me that Goodman liked doing 2 bi-monthlies instead of 1
monthly, as not only did each book sit on the newsstands a full month
longer before being returned, but it also took up twice as much
shelf-space, thus squeezing out his competitors.

Despite the MOUNTAIN of horror books Marvel published at the height of the early-70s horror boom, strangely enough, I've only been able to locate 3 POE adaptations from that period. Which brings us to...

The art was by veteran Don Heck, perhaps most famous for the early run of Iron Man in TALES OF SUSPENSE.
Although his style fell out of favor late in his career as far as
super-heroes went, in his early years he was revered for his work in
various genres, including crime, westerns, romance, and... HORROR!

Perhaps to set this one apart from the previous adaptations (especially the excellent Tom Sutton version only 17 months earlier), adapter Roy Thomas
elected to set the story decades in the future, at a time when the
entire world was wracked by plague, and only the corrupt super-rich
could afford "safety".
To my astonishment, I found this EXACT same idea was reused 6 years later,
as an episode of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater!!!

In what appears to have been a last-minute change and butcher-job
paste-over, the regular "host" of the magazine was removed and replaced
by 2 images of the company's Editor-- with Thomas'
dialogue done in the style said Editor was known for. However, for
ETHICAL reasons, I have SURGICALLY REMOVED those images along with the
connected dialogue, and REPLACED them with one of MY OWN characters, Professor Willard Wier. Apart from being the leader of a team of crime-fighting monsters, he's proven here to be a good horror host as well. Since 1975,
he's consistently been one of my favorite and most fun characters to
write. (The credits have been modified as well to reflect the changes.)

The cover is listed at the GCD as by John Romita. I suppose... Most of Marvel's art from this period had a far-too-"generic" look to it anyway. At least there's NO mistaking Don Heck's work for anyone else's! This is possibly my favorite story from him during this entire period.

This page was originally set up on January 9, 2015. Initially, I found scans of this story at the Random Happenstance blog, as well as photos (not scans) supplied by Mike Cannon, Jr. However, in June 2016, fan Pete Doree set up much-better scans at The Bronze Age Of Blogs, which I ran across on 10-23-2016. And so, here I am on 3-17-2018, setting up a NEW page to replace the old one. It's a lot of work, but trust me, it makes it much easier to do future fix-ups if these pages are set up in chronological order.

CHHAMBER OF DARKNESS 2
cover by JOHN ROMITA (Marvel / December 1969)

"THE DAY OF THE RED DEATH"
(inspired by "The Masque Of The Red Death") / Version 8
Adaptation by Roy Thomas / Art by DON HECK
Revised art, text & lettering by HENRY KUJAWA / Page 15

Both TOS and COD began featuring reprints only a few
issues into their run, always a bad sign and an indication of just how
cheap the publisher really was. The story was reprinted in an Annual
just 3 years after it originally appeared.

CHAMBER OF DARKNESS SPECIAL 1
Cover by JOHN ROMITA (Marvel / January 1972)

Scans of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #2 cover
and CHAMBER OF DARKNESS SPECIAL #1 cover
from the Heritage Auctions site.
Scan of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #2 interior page 1
from the Random Happenstance blog.
Scans of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #2 remaining interiors
supplied by Mike Cannon, Jr., and fromThe Bronze Age Of Blogs supplied by Pete Doree, with special thanks!
Scan of EL ENTERRADOR #4 from the Bartolomeu40 blog.